Savings on menu to stop food waste

Ordering too much food and leaving an ample amount on your plate, is not such a great site. Have you ever had the same experience?

Waste is a common problem of affluent societies. Especially when people can afford greater convenience and more purchases they tend to throw away more rubbish. Hong Kong is no exception to this. Even being in our prospering society, food wasting still remains to be one of our major problems. Our waste loads have grown in ratio to our economy.

In order to deal with the excessive rubbish pollution; including leftover food, Hong Kong has already built two landfills. However, both existing landfills will be filled up one by one as the waste levels continuously intensifies. Unless solutions are identified immediately, we could face a crisis in the next decade of having nowhere to put the thousands of tons of waste thrown away each day.

New landfill sites must be identified. However, the community has become more resistant to having waste facilities near their neighborhoods. To cope with the issue, the Government has thought of a scheme that helps reduce the issue of food waste.

In this scheme, eateries were encouraged to take part actively and in return they could pay a lower tariff rate. At first, it was hard to run this scheme as a mainstream action so it was under major criticism. People doubted whether it really helped to ease the problem. Since the scheme caused the eateries’ administrative problems such as employing more staff and costing immense funds, it was not the most popular option for them. It would be more favorable if the Government came up with a more cost-effective scheme.

Until then, for the time-being, we as individuals need to raise our own awareness and take responsibility for our actions. For instance, we can reduce waste by buying items with less packaging, use reusable bags for shopping, and separating waste paper, metals and plastics from our daily waste for recycling.

Let’s all work together to make Hong Kong a cleaner place to live in.
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